Appendix C: Glossary

This glossary explains terms used in the report, other than
those fully described in particular chapters.

Age Standardisation

Age standardisation has been used in order to enable groups to
be compared after adjusting for the effects of any differences in
their age distributions
.

When different sub-groups are compared in respect of a variable
on which age has an important influence, any differences in age
distributions between these sub-groups are likely to affect the
observed differences in the proportions of interest.

Age standardisation was carried out, using the direct
standardisation method. The standard population to which the age
distribution of sub-groups was adjusted was the mid-2015 population
estimates for Scotland. All age standardisation has been undertaken
separately within each sex.

The age-standardised proportion
p' was calculated as follows, where
p
i is the age specific proportion in age group
i and
N
i is the standard population size in age group
i:

Therefore
p' can be viewed as a weighted mean of
p
i using the weights
N
i. Age standardisation was carried out using the
age groups: 16-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65-74 and 75 and
over. The variance of the standardised proportion can be estimated
by:

Anthropometric measurement

See
Body mass index (
BMI)

Arithmetic mean

See
Mean

Bases

See
Unweighted bases, Weighted bases

Body mass index

Weight in kg divided by the square of height in metres. Adults
(aged 16 and over) can be classified into the following
BMI groups:

BMI (kg/m
2) - Description
Less than 18.5 - Underweight
18.5 to less than 25 - Normal
25 to less than 30 - Overweight
30 to less than 40 - Obese
40 and above - Morbidly Obese

Although the
BMI calculation
method is the same, there are no fixed
BMI cut-off
points defining overweight and obesity in children. Instead,
overweight and obesity are defined using several other methods
including age and sex specific
BMI cut-off
points or
BMI percentiles
cut-offs based on reference populations. Children can be classified
into the following groups:

Percentile cut-off

Description

At or below 2nd percentile

At risk of underweight

Above 2nd percentile and below 85th percentile

Healthy weight

At or above 85th percentile and below 95th percentile

At risk of overweight

At or above 95th percentile

At risk of obesity

Cardiovascular Disease

Participants were classified as having cardiovascular disease (
CVD) if
they reported ever having any of the following conditions diagnosed
by a doctor: angina, heart attack, stroke, heart murmur, irregular
heart rhythm, 'other heart trouble'. For the purpose of this
report, participants were classified as having a particular
condition only if they reported that the diagnosis was confirmed by
a doctor. No attempt was made to assess these self-reported
diagnoses objectively. There is therefore the possibility that some
misclassification may have occurred, because some participants may
not have remembered (or not remembered correctly) the diagnosis
made by their doctor.

Chronic ObstructivePulmonaryDisease(
COPD)

COPD
is defined by the World Health Organisation (
WHO) as
'a pulmonary disease characterised by chronic obstruction lung
airflow that interferes with normal breathing and is not fully
reversible.' It is associated with symptoms and clinical signs that
in the past have been called 'chronic bronchitis' and 'emphysema,'
including regular cough (at least three consecutive months of the
year) and production of phlegm.

Electronic cigarettes

Electronic cigarettes or e-cigarettes are battery-powered
handheld devices which heat a liquid that delivers a vapour. The
vapour is then inhaled by the user, which is known as 'vaping'.
E-cigarettes typically consist of a battery, an atomiser and a
cartridge containing the liquid. Earlier models, often referred to
as 'cigalikes', were designed to closely resemble cigarettes but
there is now a wide variety of product types on the market. The
liquid is usually flavoured and may not contain nicotine, although
in most cases e-cigarettes are used with nicotine. Unlike
conventional or traditional cigarettes, they do not contain tobacco
and do not involve combustion (
i.e. they are not lit). The
questions about e-cigarettes were amended in 2016 to include the
term 'vaping devices'.

Frankfort plane

The Frankfort Plane is an imaginary line passing through the
external ear canal and across the top of the lower bone of the eye
socket, immediately under the eye. Informants' heads are positioned
with the Frankfort Plane in a horizontal position when height is
measured using a stadiometer as a means of ensuring that, as far as
possible, the measurements taken are standardised.

GHQ12 The General Health Questionnaire (
GHQ12) is a
scale designed to detect possible psychiatric morbidity in the
general population. It was administered to informants aged 13 and
above. The questionnaire contains 12 questions about the
informant's general level of happiness, depression, anxiety and
sleep disturbance over the past four weeks. Responses to these
items are scored, with one point given each time a particular
feeling or type of behaviour was reported to have been experienced
'more than usual' or 'much more than usual' over the past few
weeks. These scores are combined to create an overall score of
between zero and twelve. A score of four or more (referred to as a
'high'
GHQ12 score)
has been used in this report to indicate the presence of a possible
psychiatric disorder.

A household was defined as one person or a group of people who
have the accommodation as their only or main residence and who
either share at least one meal a day or share the living
accommodation.

Household Reference Person

The household reference person (
HRP)
is defined as the householder (a person in whose name the property
is owned or rented) with the highest income. If there is more than
one householder and they have equal income, then the household
reference person is the oldest.

Ischaemic heart disease

Ischaemic heart disease (
IHD) is
also known as coronary heart disease. Participants were classified
as having
IHD if
they reported ever having angina, a heart attack or heart failure
diagnosed by a doctor.

Long-term conditions &limitinglong-termconditions

Long-term conditions were defined as a physical or mental health
condition or illness lasting, or expected to last 12 months or
more. The wording of this question changed in 2012 and is now
aligned with the harmonised questions for all large Scottish
Government surveys.

Long-term conditions were coded into categories defined in the
International Classification of Diseases (
ICD),
but it should be noted that the
ICD
is used mostly to classify conditions according to the cause,
whereas
SHeS
classifies according to the reported symptoms. A long-term
condition was defined as limiting if the respondent reported that
it limited their activities in any way.

Mean

Most means in this report are
Arithmetic means (the sum of the values for cases
divided by the number of cases).

Median

The value of a distribution which divides it into two equal
parts such that half the cases have values below the median and
half the cases have values above the median.

Morbid obesity

See
Body mass index.

Multiple risks

Four risk factors were examined in chapter 6  (i) being a
current smoker (ii) drinking alcohol at hazardous/harmful levels (
i.e. drinking above the
recommended maximum of 14 units per week) (iii) being obese with a
BMI of 30 or more
(iv) not meeting the physical activity guidelines of 150 minutes of
moderate activity or 70 minutes of vigorous activity (or
combination of both) per week. These risk factors are widely
accepted as having a negative impact on health.

The number of risks was totaled and the prevalence of 2 or more
risks (defined as multiple risks) was examined by area deprivation
and prevalence of long-term conditions and limiting long-term
conditions.
See also Long-term conditions and limiting long-term
conditions.

NHS
Health Board

The National Health Service (
NHS) in
Scotland is divided up into 14 geographically-based local
NHS
Boards and a number of National Special Health Boards. Health
Boards in this report refers to the 14 local
NHS
Boards. (See Volume 2:
Appendix B)

Obesity

See
Body mass index

Overweight

See
Body mass index

Percentile

The value of a distribution which partitions the cases into
groups of a specified size. For example, the 20th percentile is the
value of the distribution where 20 percent of the cases have values
below the 20th percentile and 80 percent have values above it. The
50th percentile is the median.

p value

A p value is the probability of the observed result occurring
due to chance alone. A p value of less than 5% is conventionally
taken to indicate a statistically significant result (p<0.05).
It should be noted that the p value is dependent on the sample
size, so that with large samples differences or associations which
are very small may still be statistically significant. Results
should therefore be assessed on the magnitude of the differences or
associations as well as on the p value itself. The p values given
in this report take into account the clustered sampling design of
the survey. See also
Significance testing.

Quintile

Quintiles are percentiles which divide a distribution into
fifths,
i.e., the 20th, 40th, 60th and
80th percentiles.

Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation

The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (
SIMD)
is the Scottish Government's official measure of area based
multiple deprivation. It is based on 37 indicators across 7
individual domains of current income, employment, housing, health,
education, skills and training and geographic access to services
and telecommunications.
SIMD
is calculated at data zone level, enabling small pockets of
deprivation to be identified. The data zones are ranked from most
deprived (1) to least deprived (6505) on the overall
SIMD
index. The result is a comprehensive picture of relative area
deprivation across Scotland.

Where differences in relation to a particular outcome between
two subgroups, such as men and women, are highlighted in volume 1
of this report, the differences can be considered statistically
significant, unless otherwise stated.

Statistical significance is calculated using logistic regression
to provide a
p-value based on a two-tailed significance test.
One tailed-tests are used when the difference can only be in one
direction. Two-tailed tests should always be used when the
difference can theoretically be in either direction. For example,
even though previous research has shown a higher prevalence of
hazardous levels of alcohol consumption among men than among women,
and we may expect this to be true in the most recent survey, a
two-tailed test is used to confirm the difference.

Standard deviation

The standard deviation is a measure of the extent to which the
values within a set of data are dispersed from, or close to, the
mean value. In a normally distributed set of data 68% of the cases
will lie within one standard deviation of the mean, 95% within two
standard deviations and 99% will be within 3 standard deviations.
For example, for a mean value of 50 with a standard deviation of 5,
95% of values will lie within the range 40-60.

Standard error

The standard error is a variance estimate that measures the
amount of uncertainty (as a result of sampling error) associated
with a survey statistic. All data presented in this report in the
form of means are presented with their associated standard errors
(with the exception of the
WEMWBS
scores which are also presented with their standard deviations).
Confidence intervals are calculated from the standard error;
therefore the larger the standard error, the wider the confidence
interval will be.

Standard error of the mean

See
Standard Error

Standardisation

In this report, standardisation refers to standardisation (or
'adjustment') by age (see
Age standardisation).

Unit of alcohol

Alcohol consumption is reported in terms of units of alcohol. A
unit of alcohol is 8 gms or 10ml of ethanol (pure alcohol). See
Chapter 1 of volume 1 of this Report for a full explanation of how
reported volumes of different alcoholic drinks were converted into
units.

Unweighted bases

The unweighted bases presented in the report tables provide the
number of individuals upon which the data in the table is based.
This is the number of people that were interviewed as part of the
SHeS and
provided a valid answer to the particular question or set of
questions. The unweighted bases show the number of people
interviewed in various subgroups including gender, age and
SIMD.

Weighted bases

See also
Unweighted bases. The weighted bases are adjusted
versions of the unweighted bases which involves calculating a
weight for each individual so that their representation in the
sample reflects their representation in the general population of
Scotland living in private households. Categories within the table
can be combined by using the weighted bases to calculate weighted
averages of the relevant categories.

WEMWBS The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (
WEMWBS)
was developed by researchers at the Universities of Warwick and
Edinburgh, with funding provided by
NHS
Health Scotland, to enable the measurement of mental well-being of
adults in the
UK. It was adapted
from a 40 item scale originally developed in New Zealand, the
Affectometer 2. The
WEMWBS
scale comprises 14 positively worded statements with a five item
scale ranging from '1 - None of the time' to '5 - All of the time'.
The lowest score possible is therefore 14 and the highest is 70.
The 14 items are designed to assess positive affect (optimism,
cheerfulness, relaxation); and satisfying interpersonal
relationships and positive functioning (energy, clear thinking,
self-acceptance, personal development, mastery and autonomy).